[Lasher]

I can't imagine a reason why TMS would close period. I can imagine scenarios in which I personally no longer want to run it, mostly related to the fact that I just haven't had the time to make TMS what it could be, but to just shut it down and not let someone else run with it would seem like an awful waste. I never understand MudMagic closing that way, but Kyndig must have had his reasons.

When I picked up TMS it was on a domain forum (namepros.com) implying that there was probably more value in farming the URL for traffic than there was in actually running the site. That implication is probably true, the domain has enough "authority" and backlinks that even if the actual MUDs removed their links to it, all those mentions on more general sites would provide traffic for a long time which could be valuable to many other sites. Think of it in the context of what they pay per click on adsense for similar traffic. That was the reason I picked it up at all, to make sure it pretty much stayed as it is - true to MUDs.

Redoing the forums and rewriting the voting was fun but way too time consuming. I like the way the forums turned out, but just never got to doing the same for the reviews and articles, adding graphs for voting history (I have it by day since the rewrite), etc.

I've considered selling it, but not a week goes by that I don't turn down ads from non-MUD sites, usually growing MMOs, gold/power leveling "services" (we actually ran ads for a couple of those for a brief while but I cancelled/refunded them) and arcade sites. It would not seem reasonable to try to sell it with any kind of restriction on that because that's where the money is and presumably anyone buying it would do so as a business opportunity, so options are limited. I've also considered going in the other direction - trying to make it more relevant to MMO players so they also get exposure to MUDs while here. Have also considered taking on a "partner" to develop it out further, but it's not a big money maker and never will be while it is MUDs only, so anyone talented enough to make it work can already either (a) start their own site or (b) focus on a more lucrative subject.

Not to make out that I'm being some kind of martyr in all this, it has been a good source of traffic for many MUDs, mine included. So, while people have an (understandable) concern about conflict of interest, hopefully there's also a little comfort from the flip side of that - vested interest in keeping it about MUDs.

Hmm, I just spent a whole lot of time answering a question you didn't ask As for a wiki itself, haven't really thought about it. Wikis tend to get mirrored all over the place by content scrapers whether you like it or not anyway. I haven't thought this through, but don't see a big problem with making the wiki part of the site available as a download, either as a public download or just to a few key members/editors. How do other wikis handle this?